


Merciful

by AreYouReady



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: A Touch Of Gore For Good Measure, Assimilation, Gen, Horror, Identity loss, It Is Not Linear, Reincarnation, The Borg Are Definitely A Lovecraftian Abomination, Time Shenanigans, eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 08:44:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8705560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreYouReady/pseuds/AreYouReady
Summary: Benjamin Sisko is One in his Multiplicity, and the Prophets are merciful.He cannot leave well enough alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Based on http://swimminginthegreatlink.tumblr.com/post/151404646762/emissary-for-ds9reversebang  
> Written for the DS9 Reverse Bang on tumblr.  
> Beta'd by jazzypizzaz.

The second time Benjamin Sisko was born into a humanoid form, he spent forty years of his life as a Bajoran farmer, having only the knowledge that something was missing from his life to keep him from happy simplicity. He had a wife, two daughters, and a plot of kava big enough that they could sell the harvest and eat for the whole year. But when he spoke, his voice sounded off to his own ears, like someone had sucked the music out of it with a curse.

And then the Prophets spoke to him, and he Remembered.

It felt as though his body were melting, folding in on itself, until it was taller, broader, suddenly… Human. Benjamin Sisko has died an old man after his Return, and now Benjamin Sisko was significantly younger and more spry. 

But Jake Sisko was dead. Kasidy Yates-Sisko was dead. Rebecca Sisko was dying, and did not have the time left to get to know a man who claimed to be her father. Benjamin Sisko looked at the children that had been born to him in this new body, and begged the Prophets to make him forget.

They were merciful.

-

The fourth time Benjamin Sisko was born into humanoid form, he already Knew. He did not remember anything from before he Remembered. He pitied this child’s family somewhat, for having their son snatched away from them, to play the games of the Prophets. 

He lived out this life obeying Their orders directly. And yet the path it took him on was winding. It led him past suffering after suffering, narrowly avoiding each, yes, but also past person after person, until, just as he began to wonder if this life was meant to be his loneliest, it led him into the arms of a lover. The man was beautiful, just a year older than Benjamin, or rather, Benjamin’s body, and the whispers of the Prophets followed in his wake. 

Benjamin did not understand. In every life, the Prophets had encouraged him to take a solitary road.

But then the visions began to come not to him, but to his beloved, and he understood. He was to guide another chosen one down the chosen path.

He breathed his last eighty years later, and his last sight was the loving brown eyes of the greatest Kai Bajor had ever known.

They were merciful.

-

The seventh time Benjamin Sisko was born into humanoid form, she became a Vedek long before anyone expected. She had always found that the Prophets called to her, in small ways. She felt the fabric of reality tug around her as she walked, and she could almost sense the divine Truth behind every moment. She felt the world swirl around her, and it motivated her to rise. She needed to know the orbs. Each one of them.

But when she touched them, she felt nothing except a great painful pressure, as though a dam in her mind was readying itself to fall. She knew she could not allow that. And yet she could not keep away.

Her Memory returned by accident. Her death chased swiftly after. 

They were merciful.

-

After leading seven lives, Benjamin Sisko was no longer asked by the Prophets to descend, and yet They told him that his work was just beginning. When he was finally welcomed back, the part-of-the-Prophets-that-was-Sarah surrounded him with Her presence. She showed him the Threads, pieces of the universe that could be pulled, pushed, tugged on. These were the tools of the Prophets, where They gained Their power. 

The Threads wrapped thick around his own existence, thicker than around any other life in the universe. He wondered, for half a moment, whether the Threads were thick because he was the Emissary, or he had been chosen because his life was thick with Threads. Then he realized that that had no meaning. The Prophets’ way was not linear.

But what unsettled him was that the Threads coming from him wrapped tight around Jake, Kasidy, Rebecca. Even, and a shudder wracked through him at the realization, Jennifer. The idea that the Prophets had exerted a force on his life, that his free will was not fully free, was one that he was used to, but the idea that They had done (were doing?) the same with his loved ones disturbed him, though he had to admit it didn’t precisely shock him. They had manipulated his six Later lives, why would his First life be spared.

The Threads ran forwards and backwards, but most fascinatingly, he found that they contained knots. The largest knot spun around that fateful, awful day when Jake – but not his Jake – gave his life to prevent Benjamin’s own senseless death. If he had still had a body, he would have been nauseous; as it was, he felt the wisps of his consciousness fleeing from the thought. But he could not keep himself away, and as he examined the knot closer, he felt horror swirling around him.

If the Prophets had not interfered, Jake would have lived out a full and happy life, despite tragedy in his youth. He would have had a beautiful Bajoran wife, three loving daughters, a nest full of grandchildren. And most importantly for Jake, ten of the greatest novels in human literary canon. But the Threads around this Jake’s life were pulled taut, each dragging him away from the happiness that it was his natural way to seek out. This Jake had suffered, on the will of the Prophets. Because the Prophets had to have Their Emissary.

He wished to damn Them, but such anger would attract Their attention, more of it than was always trained on him. They would be angered. He still had Threads to be tugged.

Instead, he ripped through his own timeline, searching for knots around him. The first that he found…

_ The ruins of Ashalla burned around him. A line of Jem’Hadar marched past his bleeding body. His lungs rasped when he breathed; they were filling with blood. He was alone.  _

_ He hoped Kira had made it out alive. Odo had done his best to protect her, and the Jem’Hadar had been unwilling to kill him. But everyone else… Jake had died quickly, at least. A disruptor shot to the head. He didn’t even see it coming. Ben had seen him crumple, and gone numb. At that moment, he had understood that he would feel the grief later. But now that he knew there would be no later, his greatest regret was that his son had died unmourned. _

_ Jadzia hadn’t been so lucky. Two Jem’Hadar had held her arms, with another two for himself and four for Worf, as the grinning Vorta had ripped Dax out of her body. Jadzia’s scream and the wet slap as her guts had hit the ground, flowing out through the gaping gash in the flesh of her stomach, still rang in his ears, but somehow the helpless writhing of the tiny symbiont as the Vorta had carried it away had been so much worse. _

_ Worf, with the adrenaline rush that could only come from seeing a loved one in danger and a mighty Klingon battle cry, broke free of his Jem’Hadar captors. He was vaporized before he’d made it a meter, and Benjamin had watched Dax still at that moment, as though it knew. _

_ As for everyone else, well, he didn’t know. He’d been with Kira and Odo when the station was finally destroyed, but he’d seen other escape pods blasting off, so he could hope. _

_ He’d been separated from the other two almost the moment they landed. They’d fallen into the middle of a battle field, and as soon as the pod’s hatch flicked open, the fighting had rolled over them, and he’d lost track of where Odo and Kira were. And now, hours later, he was bleeding out in the streets of Ashalla. _

_ Bajor should never have joined the Prophets-damned Federation. _

Benjamin recoiled. The influence of the Prophets was not negative. He knew this. But it had taken seeing horrors to remind him. 

Still, he could not help but search for other knots. There was a strangely shaped one just before his first Ascension; he sped along the timeline until he reached it. The Threads were snarled as though they had been yanked hard, and yet the Thread that represented him had continued on its path. What had They been trying to pull him away from…?

Kasidy. They had been trying to pull him away from Kasidy, to force him to take Their solitary chosen path. But They had failed.

It seemed a touch heretical to be so pleased by a victory over his Gods. Benjamin did not care.

There was another knot he saw, the largest one before his first contact, from his perspective, with the Prophets. He edged toward it cautiously, not wanting to feel his own death again, if that was indeed what the Prophets had been preventing. But his care was for naught.

_ Benjamin tried to move his arm to push away the drone pawing at his limp body, but the pain was too great. He was unable to resist as it lifted him, rough fingers crushing his chest, pushing the tips of broken ribs into his lungs. He saw, as if it was a dream, his own blood dripping onto the metallic floor of the  _ Saratoga’s _ bridge. The fires all around tightened the skin on his face, and somehow that detail helped keep him conscious against the pain as he was carried off the bridge. But once the cold air inside the Cube hit him, he could no longer cling to the waking world, and he slipped away… _

_ He returned unexpectedly. He had thought himself mercifully dead, was ready to join his wife and child, but he came to in more pain than any afterlife would allow. White light screamed at him, even through his closed eyelids. When he opened them, he saw nothing. But he heard the voice, reverberating through his broken bones. _

_ “You will be assimilated.” _

_ It came from all around him in a thousand machine screeches. And then he felt the drill entering his skull. _

_ The pain barely registered against what he was already feeling, but the terror of the vibration, the grinding, of something reaching into the physicality of his mind… _

_ A thousand voices cried out in unison, and Ben tried to scream just to hold onto himself, but could not pull in enough air. The noise… but to his horror, he felt himself finding patterns in the din, his brain being forced to turn cacophony to harmony as the implants took hold. He began to understand the ebb and flow of the Borg Consciousness, began feeling it lapping at the edges of his own… _

Benjamin wrenched himself out of that knot, but the Consciousness followed him, pulling at the edges of his spirit, the mindless orderly chaos. He knew his place in the universe, he was the Emissary. He knew his place in the universe, he was a Part of a Whole. He knew his place in the universe, he was a drone. No, he was a Drone. A Drone. A Drone. A Drone.

_ You will be assimilated. You will be assimilated,  _ Emissary. 

Emissary.

He clung to the Threads that still bound him, as he was now, to the Prophets. If They could pull him from the ruins of Bajor, They could save him from assimilation. Or Assimilation.  He called to Them, and They answered, rippling into his consciousness. But the Others were not to be driven out so easily.

He was torn between two mental forces as They swirled and battled, and the fabric of time ripped. All he wanted was to keep himself  _ himself,  _ so stay free of absorbing influence. But now he had begun a War far greater than he could understand in his limited individuality, and all he could do was flee into the side he thought was Good. He surrounded himself with the memories of seven lifetimes, trying to be One in his own Multiplicity, but Things beyond his control still gnawed at the edge of his Self. The clawing of the Collective tore at his Individuality, he began losing his grip, he felt the Prophets enveloping him-

-

_ It is understood that within the construct called linear time, the consciousness of the Sisko persisted as its own entity, both within Our home and taking physical form outside it, for five tens and ten hundreds of rotations of the planet from whence the Sisko originates around its star. During that time, this consciousness was in one instance allowed temporary, limited control of parts of the matrix of causality that is Our purview. It was because of this that the Sisko was allowed, after his work as a causally-bound individual being was done, to come into Our togetherness. Of course, causality works both ways, and it is because he is Us that he served Our purposes so skillfully when he was not.  _

_ We are merciful _ .


End file.
